


The Best Team

by anawfulybigadventure



Category: Naruto
Genre: Asuma loves Team 10, Canon Compliant, Competition, Gen, Kakashi loves Team 7, Post-Naruto Time Skip | Naruto Shippuden, Teacher-Student, kind of crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 16:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18450323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anawfulybigadventure/pseuds/anawfulybigadventure
Summary: Whose students will prove better?Asuma loves team 10, Kakashi loves team 7. But who loves their students better?





	The Best Team

**Author's Note:**

> this fic came into my house and wrote itself using my hands to type it out. i had no choice in the matter.

Asuma and Kakashi stand on the roof, looking down. Their students haven't noticed them. Team Kakashi and team Asuma have a joined mission, but that can wait. The tension comes from them both competing silently - whose students will first notice them? Whose students will prove better?

Asuma tries to will Shikamaru to think and pay attention to details. Ino and Chouji are too deep in the argument. 

He looks at Kakashi’s team. It’s not going to be Naruto, unless by an accident. How good Sai is, Asuma doesn’t know, but he can’t be counted. He isn’t Kakashi’s student, at most, he’s Yamato’s. Besides, Naruto is distracting him, talking animatedly about something foolish. Sakura is good, but Ino is better.

Kakashi, of course, doesn’t think so. Many times when they were reporting to Hokage, Kakashi made it very plain to Asuma that Sakura’s marks were best in the Academy, that she passed Chuunin’s exams without cheating on the cheating test. Alright, Sakura is intelligent, but Asuma can never understand why people are trying to show off the intelligence of their students to him, of all people. He is Shikamaru’s teacher.

Besides, Asuma always tried to argue - the cheating test is to check how well they can cheat. Ino used Sakura, so… Asuma doesn’t try to revive the old beaten dialogue, he and Kakashi had fights over less.

Whose team has better teamwork? Kakashi lost Sasuke, so Asuma thinks he can easily claim the win. Kakashi doesn’t think so, but Asuma feels enough compassion to let him live in delusion - Kakashi is the one who lost a student, Asuma knows better than to offer pity. Kakashi, maybe in self-saving illusion holds on to the thought that Sasuke will come back. 

That is one of the few arguments that Kurenai never fails to pass the chance to show off. She says her students care about each other, all are treating each other with greatest amount of respect. He and Kakashi have seen team Kurenai's work, and it is impressive, they are all so sensitive, so caring, cheering each other on, and they never fight, constantly compliment each other’s smallest victories. They let Kurenai win this round, and then, under shadows of the night, away from Kurenai, whispered to each other that they’d rather die that have their teams be that sweet with each other. Kakashi’s members fight quite violently, he’s seen it - Naruto and Sasuke constantly, always ready to kill, and Sakura punches them hard enough to maim a regular person, but where is the intelligence in that? When Shikamaru and Ino wake up on the wrong foot they can find such sensitive spots in each other even Asuma feels a wave of second-hand embarrassment. They can easily fight for a week straight, never forgetting what they said before and never backing down. They’ll find such needling words, Asuma has half a mind to write them down so that future generations would know how to insult others.

Before Sasuke was gone, one of the most interesting arguments they’ve had was related to whose genius of the team would win in the fight. Sasuke is good, one of the best his age, Uchiha also, and sharingan can never be underestimated. But, Asuma thinks that once Shikamaru is truly interested in winning, he’d win against anyone. He’d tried to ask Shikamaru what he’d do if, during the Chuunin exams, he’d end up against Sasuke, and Shikamaru has said that he’d forfeit. To his long embarrassment, he said it loud enough for Kakashi to hear it, and never let Asuma live ever since then. 

Kurenai, they both agreed, is a bit delusional, Hyuga heir or not, the girl is sweet and kind, and steadily gains the power to fill in the big pants she’s meant to fill, but not a competition to their best students. But there was something Kurenai told him, which he reminded himself during the spats with Kakashi - that Hinata is the primal heir of well-respected clan, strongest in the village, while Sasuke is only the second son, and not even Madara’s direct heir, while Hinata’s line can be traced to the prehistoric era. The power did indeed very often run through the primal heirs in their world, and team Asuma had three primal heirs of three respected clans. 

Guy placed Neji forward in one of the spats, saying that it isn’t even entirely fair to their students because he is older, like Neji wasn’t wiped by Naruto.

One of the most ridiculous fights they have is related to the goodness of their soft-hearted students. Kakashi told him Naruto helped building a bridge in a village even though he was ridiculed by that village. Asuma told him that Chouji feeds all the homeless they ever encounter on the missions. Kakashi would say that Naruto loves this village even though it hated him all his childhood, and Asuma would counter with the fact that Chouji would never hate a single person in the world, Chouji and Shikamaru always played with Naruto, so he wasn’t that big of a tragedy.

Whose beautiful student is more beautiful? That one was tricky. Sasuke had more girls falling for him than Ino had boys confessing to her, but then, Asuma would say, it is actually because he is an Uchiha and the reputation of his clan is responsible for his popularity. 

Ino and Sakura both loved Sasuke, and that field was interesting to have fights at, too. From what Asuma knows of boys, such girls as Ino always win against girls like Sakura, but Sakura has the upper hand by being Sasuke’s team member. And, well, after observing Sasuke, Asuma had to admit that the boy isn’t at all like the normal boys. He’s seen him unimpressed by Naruto’s pervert jutsu, so, it was possible, that all Ino’s advantages were missed on poor miserable boy who was too traumatized to understand Ino’s charm.

Besides, if Asuma is being completely honest, he’s always hoped Ino would date Shikamaru. He’s seen the sure growing thing between Sakura and Sasuke, and seen how proud Kakashi was for them (lost in the illusion that two of the best people found each other, when it was very clear that Asuma had the best people on his team), and he was, admittedly, jealous. Maybe, he could hope for Ino to date Chouji. Hell, Asuma would easily take Shikamaru and Chouji and gladly give them his blessing, knowing that in the years to come his team will live together and care for each other above all else.

But Shikamaru's feisty thing from Suna is Kazekage’s sister, blonde and older, so he feels proud for Shikamaru. As far as Asuma knowledge of boys stretches, such things count high, and Shikamaru could easily take the title of homecoming king. Asuma never suspected Shikamaru could be crushing with such fervour, or that he’d choose a woman so hot, in all meanings of the word, but he is proud for him.

After he noted Shikamaru’s interest in Temari, Asuma hoped it would create a new type of connection between Chouji and Ino, and it did, for the time, their friendship, while Shikamaru was walking with Temari, deepened. And then that boy Sai came along.

What’s with Ino crushing on Team 7 boys? Like she doesn’t have the best men on her own team. 

At least the boy has enough sense to succumb to Ino’s charms. Asuma noted that Sai treated both Naruto and Sakura with same friendly deadpan interest which is the expected way. Asuma was always surprised to learn just how many boys crushed on Haruno girl - Guy’s Lee, Naruto. Kakashi proudly told him of some chuunin Sakura saved. Asuma wanted to say that it is only because Sakura saved him and he felt gratitude, because Sakura, quite frankly, has little charm to her, but then people were killed because of lesser offences. Still, in his expertise, girls like Sakura men barely recognize for females. 

Kakashi has said that if he was same age with his students, he wouldn’t even look at anyone except Sakura, that he’d be happy, much like Naruto and Lee and all boys with taste to love her without hope. Like Asuma wouldn’t fall in exact same way for Ino (provided that Kurenai wouldn’t be in that script), like Asuma wouldn’t form Ino Yamanaka fan boy club, if only he’d been younger.

Still, at last, the world tilted right, and Asuma noted with pleasure that Sai treated Ino distinctly different from all the rest. Asuma thinks he might like that new member of Kakashi’s team.

Kurenai always told them they are behaving like they still hadn’t graduated from the Academy whenever they would pick their, often, wordless fight, but always participates in them herself, nonetheless. His competition with Kakashi, even if done from the shadows, has same fervour that Kakashi's fights with Guy do. Sometimes Asuma wonders if Kakashi and Guy compete away from them, and he thinks he knows the answer - both Naruto and Lee are encouraged by their mentors to be overflowing in their attention to the Haruno girl. Asuma has heard of many trainings Guy made his team go to prepare them for the fight against a sharingan. Truth is, they might be better suited to take Itachi down after it, but they can’t tell Kakashi that, because Kakashi took to heart the oath a twelve-year old child made, and would spend his life fighting to make it come true.

Kurenai herself, who is always so well-mannered and kind towards everyone, during the chuunin exams, tensed whenever she was with Guy, only because of Hyuga-clan entanglement. She said she could not understand how Guy could support his precious student and not notice how that student is behaving mean and rude, as if forgetting that she’s talking about a thirteen-year old. 

Their tension eased dramatically when she and Guy picked an argument against Kakashi about the merits of byakugan against sharingan.

So, yes, Kurenai isn’t free of that pull as well. She’s told him that it is ridiculous how he chooses to fight Kakashi in that when they could easily compete as Third and Fourth Hokage’s students, or choosing to favour their fathers’ legacy to respect, but who cares about all that? They need to know which of teenagers will win the boy, and which will win in the fight, and who raised them to have better connection with the others.

He and Kakashi both shift when they note the new three shadows and a dog joining their teams. 

Team Kurenai announces that they are sent to join them on the mission.

“Now, we just need to wait for the teachers to come,” - Naruto whines.

Shino conserves with his bug, Kiba listens to the bark of Akimaru and Hinata looks immediately upward where they are standing.

“But they are here,” - Kurenai's students say together.

 

(Asuma hooks his hand on Kakashi shoulder and moves them into the darkness of the shadow to converse. “It means nothing,” - he whispers. Kakashi answers, “It is basically unfair, they are a searching team.” “Yes! Yes, exactly. As unfair as it would be for your teams to know each other as well as my students know each other, they’ve known each other since before they were born-“. “My team knows each other better than they know themselves.” “Now, come on…”)


End file.
